Once, when my young daugher had been stung by someone's comment,

In last week's Prayer and Reflection, Fr. Dexter said something like

From across the fence that separates our yards, my four year old neighbor called out to me.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus prays for his disciples.

Recently I did lectio divina with a text from Acts of the Apostles.

When I was on staff at Christ the King, I met weekly with the Fun Bunch to play cards.

My father's eyes were alow as he described his fishing trip to Alaska;

During the most difficult time in my life, a gloom settled in my mind, shading out any sense of liveliness or happiness.

Gathered behind locked doors, the original disciples were anxious and fearful.

I was named for my grandmother, Caroline Weber White - Nannie to me. She gave birth to my mom when she was forty so was elderly by the time I was a teenager.

“How long have you been a parishioner at Christ the King,” a young woman asked. “Since around 1983-84.” As I watched her eyes widened, I realized, “You weren’t even born then, were you?”

Lately I’ve been feeling uninspired.  I’ve noticed this sense of listlessness particularly in prayer.  In religious books, I have run across the term “a dry period” to connote a desert-like time in one’s prayer life.  Is that what I am experiencing?  The word that comes to my mind is not dryness but emptiness.  The feeling within me seems more like the lonely void of interstellar space.

    At times I don’t feel all that loving, even toward people I love very much.  This waxing and waning in my affection bothers me.  What is the source of my fickleness?

Did you know there are at least 350,000 species of beetles?  That is just one example of the incredible variety of life on this planet alone.  Nature seems to love diversity; human nature does not always seem to love diversity.  

The Beatitudes confuse me—and that’s a problem since they are central to Jesus’ teaching.  But just take the first three, why is it blessed to be poor in spirit, to mourn, to be meek?   I tend to think I would rather be rich in spirit, happy, and at least somewhat assertive.

Jesus’ critics are concerned with his sitting at table with Roman collaborators and others they labeled as sinners.  These “Pharisees and scribes” believe it was important to maintain a distinction between righteous and sinful behavior.  Jesus appeared to be ignoring those categories.

Although not a doctor, Grandmother had very definite medical ideas.  She knew “regularity” was the best indicator of good health.  When she saw her grandson fall out of a tree, she ran to him and, noticing his arm bent at an odd angle, immediately asked, “When was your last bowel movement?”

  While convalescing recently, I sought consolation in Netflix, specifically the Fr. Brown series.  Fr. Brown is a perceptive, gentle priest with a penchant for solving mysteries—which is a very good thing since apparently someone in his parish either gets murdered or disappears on a weekly basis. 

Have you read Late Migrations by Margaret Renkle?  If not, I recommend it.  The delicacy of her descriptions of trees, birds and family members touches deeply into my heart, stirring up my own memories of loves and losses. 

At the risk of misinterpreting the Creed that we profess every Sunday, I want to express thoughts that have been whizzing around in my mind.  Were you not taught, as I was, that Jesus was human and divine?  That in the person of Jesus, divinity “was made flesh and dwelt among us”?  Bishops at the council of Chalcedon (451) cautioned Christians not to think of these natures as separate, rather as uniquely one, in the person Jesus.         So far, so good—but here is the part I am pondering:  is Jesus a paradox who offers us a key to help us understand ourselves?  Are we too a mixture of human elements and elements we name divine?  Personally, I am well aware of my humanness.  My five senses are fallible guides for knowing tangible reality; even less helpful in comprehending intangible or supernatural reality.  I am aware that my human perceptions and understandings are limited.           Yet I intuit a Self beyond my self guiding me toward a greater sense of Reality.  There is a divine indwelling that allows me to “see,” to “know,” in a different way.  Our tradition upholds we are “made in the image and likeness of God,” we are “the Body of Christ,” we are “temples of the Holy Spirit.”  there is more to me than only my human nature; I am intimately connected to divinity.         If Jesus’ divinity/humanity is not an anomaly, if we humans are a mixture (albeit a very imperfect one) of humanness and godliness; then the Word of God is still being made flesh by people in our own day and time.  Then in Jesus Christ we do have a key to understanding ourselves as both human and capable of bringing the presence of God into our world.  Then incarnation is ongoing.